The advantage that you have with dancing in your utility belt can tip the social scales in your favor. So what is stopping most guys from taking lessons? Sure it cost money. However, the real cost of entry is traveling a road that is filled with ego spikes and slippery slopes of feeling awkward.
Most guys would prefer to hold a beer, but if you're reading this article - you aren't like most guys.
I rarely do this, but this story is far too important. Instead of my usual style of writing, I am presenting to you my own story, the Chris Lynam one, writing in my own voice, and sharing my personal dance journey.
Why? Because, I was that guy. The typical guy.
The guy that thought dancing was for girls, the one that secretly admired good dancers, and the one that needed to drastically change his social confidence.
Like every other average guy, I went to nightclubs to meet girls... and, you know, "enjoy the music". What I did, like every other average guy, is walk around the same nightclubs, to the same music, passing by potential social encounters like a timid driver failing to change lanes.
I was stuck.
As fed up as I was spending money, obsessing over unimportant details (like matching my belt with my shoes - you know that's a high priority item for most girls), and taking more laps than an underperforming football player - I just tolerated it. "The nightclub is where you meet girls", I would say, "this time it's going to be different".
I was like a washed up gambler at a horse track. Trying desperately to convince myself that things would turn around. Nothing changed. So I had to.
A friend of mine had decided to try out swing dancing. I decided to check it out. What I saw completely changed my social life, and actual life, forever. There were guys asking girls to dance... and they were saying yes! It felt like I had traveled back in time to an old 50's dance where the gents asked the ladies to dance, and even a polite "mind if I cut in?" was seen as a non-threat.
It was just dancing. I was hooked.
After a few summers of solid swing dancing, and even recruiting my sister to be my occasional swing partner, I needed more. Swing dancing had rebuilt my social life confidence. I was meeting people, making friends, and there was a community of people that I felt connected to. It was the dancing version of Cheers, and it was time to take it to the next level.
I walked out of my job, joined the Arthur Murray training program, and dove in. I kept thining, "if I can feel this good learning one dance, I wonder what it will be like if I knew more?" That summer, as an Arthur Murray professional, my friends and I walked into the nightclub where we'd go swing dancing. My buddy stops me at the door and says, "whatever you do, don't mention the trump card to any girls we talk to." "Trump card?" I wasn't following. "You know, how you work at Arthur Murray and can dance all those different dances. That trump card."
Learning how to dance is like learning to be a French Pastry Chef. It's not too sexy to talk about early in the process, and you may get laughed at by your buddies. The turning point, however, is when you can cook like a French Pastry chef. When you can serve what you made to friends at a dinner party, and suddently, almost magically, your buddies are bragging about what a great pastry chef you are.
Guys like Emmitt Smith, Apollo Ohno, and Jerry Rice have been fantastic examples for would-be male dancers out there. As easy as it is to say things like:
Dancing just isn't my thing...
I was born with two left feet...
I just let the girls do the dancing....
Guys that have Super Bowl rings and Gold medals seem to have influenced more and more guys to see dancing as something else: A real option.
I used to make fun of my father for taking ballroom dance lessons. I said the typical things a young man might say. To summarize, let's just say that I wasn't very encouraging. Yet here was someone who was willing to walk through the barbs of ridicule to learn something that made him happy, and socially active. Flash forward to the present and ballroom dancing is how both me, and my father, met the people we are married to.
We didn't both set out to meet a spouse - "Hey son, I've got a brilliant idea...". It was to break a trend, and to start a new one. Whether you're doing laps around a nightclub, or laps around your office - all a guy needs to do is break the cycle and replace it with something more positive.
In this example it was dance lessons, and it was the best ego-challenging, awkward-slippery-slope, improve-your-confidence-trump-card decision I've ever made.
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